Yule deluge
For Gallup P.O., it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

The Gallup, N.M. post office bustles with business Tuesday afternoon in Gallup. As the holidays nears, heavier mailing traffic is expected. [Photo by Daniel Zollinger/Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Here it was on Tuesday, six days before the U.S. Post Office’s busiest mailing day of the year, and the post office in Gallup was almost deserted as the noon hour approached.

But the clerks at the post office said it wouldn’t last — the bad weather would clear up and the post office would once again be bustling with activity.

“Everything is going smoothly,” Gallup Postmaster Thelma Malone said, although she knows the weather and human nature can make life extremely hectic for post office employees, as Christmas gets closer and closer and people wait until the last day to mail that tie they bought for Uncle Fred.

While there are no plans to hire extra people for the holidays, Malone said she doesn’t expect to have any problems this year, even though the expectations are that there will be more packages going to homes in Gallup and other towns as Americans change the way they do their Christmas shopping.

Fewer of us are apparently going to the local stores and buying that tie for Uncle Fred. Around one in three shoppers — some 34 percent — will do the majority of their shopping online, according to the consumer comparison Web site Savebuckets.

This means more work for postal workers. Thankfully they have families like the DiPaolos here in Gallup.

Diane DiPaolo said she won’t have to mail any packages this year because all of her family are coming here to visit her and her husband, Angelo, for the holidays.

But Malone said she and the 34 other postal workers in Gallup are getting ready for the deluge that will really begin early next week and will probably continue until the Monday before Christmas.

A couple of things that people in Gallup should remember as they make plans to do their mailing with the hopes that it will reach their destination by Christmas.

First, while letters that are mailed to an address in Gallup have to go to Albuquerque and be sorted, which can delay delivery two to three days, parcels do not go through the same process.

So a parcel that is mailed here on Friday, for example, will stay here in Gallup, Malone said, and will be delivered the in the next couple of days.

Also the Gallup office, like all other post offices throughout the country, will be delivering express mail on Christmas.

Three of the Gallup post office crew will be assigned to work on that day with the post office hoping that three local workers will volunteer to work that day. If not, the people with the least seniority — which means the two carriers that were recently hired — will be assigned to work that day, delivering express mail and any package that contains perishables.

“We will be delivering the mail as it comes in,” she said, adding that if mail is delayed, the most common reason is weather.

For example, some mail that comes to Gallup is routed by way of Flagstaff so if the snows make Interstate 40 impassable in the west — which is more common — or even the east, mail will be delayed.

But Malone said she and the others will do what they can to get the Christmas greetings and gifts delivered in time.

But she said, she hoped that Gallupians would do their part and follow one simple rule: “Mail early.”